Inventing The Impossible

I have previously posted about Marco Tempest and his inclusion of modern technology in his magic performances. In the video below he give a little insight into his philosophy on creating magic effects and how they cross over with technology.
To start it off he reminds us of Arthur C Clarke's third law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And goes on to describe how people like Robert Houdin and others also tread this line in the golden age of magic.

Magic is a unique tool for previsualizing the future. Magicians show their audiences what it would be like to fly, read minds, have super powers, teleport, disappear and reappear. Magicians are prototyping the future every day.

Marco Tempest

The final illusion he performs is picked straight out of David Brin's latest book Existence. Glasses that can be worn and that shows you a digitally enhanced world. It gives you a map overlay, a yellow brick road, if you will, leading you straight to where you are going or even telling you who the people are that passes you. This is a technology which is currently being developed by google, (check a teaser here) but with magic we can see glimpses of the future now. It might still be crude, but so was the first brick sized mobile phone i had in 1994.

Art is the most Beautiful of All Lies

The theme of lies and deceits and the peculiar truths that can be revealed through them is a favorite here on the Illuminated Showman. When I woke at five in the morning due to jet lag and trawled the digital showground for inspiring showmen I was quite pleased to find magician Marco Tempest's performance at TED: Edinburgh in 2011. In it he uses three iPods in a sweet mix of Real Magic and digital wizardry. Something about this brings Arthur C. Clarke's third Law to mind.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

 In the following clip Marco Tempest beautifully blurs the line of magic and technology.

Claude Debussy said: "Art is the greatest deception of all." Marco Tempest adds:
"Art is a deception that creates real emotion. A lie that creates a truth, and when you give yourself over to that deception it becomes magic."

(The rest of the Debussy quote goes as follows:
Art is the greatest deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory. ... Let us not disillusion anyone by bringing too much reality into the dream.)